and food and vacations, too.

I was wondering what to cook for dinner. I had some rice from morning which I could fry with some spices and veggies and make a pulao of sort. Or I could eat the kadhi chawal neighbour had sent. Even as I sat contemplating what to cook, it suddenly struck me that in just a few weeks’ time I’ll be moving out of the city.

I will be uprooting myself from the comfort of this place, where I know the roads like the back of my hand, to a city where I’ll depend heavily on either on my husband or Google maps to help me reach my destination. One thought led to another and suddenly I realised I will also not be visiting my favourite places for tea, coffee, pizzas, junk food at moments’ notice either. That I AM MOVING CITIES!

Oh, how I will miss the pani puri at Vastrapur lake. The dabeli at Karnavati and vadapav near H L college. The pav bhaji at Honest (C. G. Road only) and fafda from Oshwal. Khaman, khamani, Chinese samosa from Das and mohanthaal and boondi laadu from Kandoi Bhogilal Moolchand. Sandwich from Char Bhuja and Chinese Bhel and Jashuben’s pizza from Shambhu’s. Coffee at Zen ❤️❤️

:(

I then felt extremely sad at this and trashed the idea of cooking something. I’d rather order in food from places I won’t get to eat regularly when I move cities.

My neighbour has a 2 year old son. He is not afraid of anything. He climbs stairs without any support. He climbs down the stairs without any support either. He appears as if he would stumble and perhaps fall down the flight of stairs, but he, with his tiny legs, is again climbing down without any support of the railing.

His other favourite thing to do is chase animals. Stray dogs, peacocks, monkeys. He likes to run up to them and befriend them. He thinks they’re playing with him if they try to run away. He is not afraid of reaching out to a monkey. He isn’t afraid that the dog might bite him.

He is also not afraid of running on to the roads. As soon as he sees the gate of his home open, he wants to run on the road. He is not afraid of vehicular traffic. He doesn’t think some moving car may hit him or a stranger might take him away. No. He’s just happy to be running around. For him, everyone is playing with him.

Was I ever this fearless? Why am I afraid to take that step? Why am I afraid to speak my mind? Why am I wary of strangers? It could be series of experiences over the years that makes you cynical. Some steps we may have taken could have backfired. Sometimes staying quiet could have been better than speaking up. Perhaps if I hadn’t come across strangers who turned friends who eventually hurt me deeply, I wouldn’t be so wary of trusting people.

With experience also comes the ability to study and judge people easily. I wish I wasn’t so right about people so many times. I wish I were wrong about how terribly awful some people could be. I wish I was wrong every single time I judged someone to be a vicious human being.

But with time, I am coming to realisation it is not for me to help the distressed souls. That it is not for me to be all Mother Teresa and take them under my wings to sort out their issues. Because more often than not, all your deeds are misunderstood, even if you have best of intentions in your mind. Perhaps this is where you learn. You learn to let go and have faith that things will sort themselves out.

Perhaps I could learn from that two year old. To give in. To go heads on into things I have no idea about. To venture into the unknown. To take the plunge.

Even when we know that the truth is far from what we hear and see. But the heart wants what the heart wants.

How right is it to blame the other person when things don’t turn out our way? How right is it to put the blame on someone else when it was you who chose to hear and see what you wanted to? How right is it to channelise all your rage on someone else when one should be introspecting and seeing where things went wrong?

A lot of people on Twitter these days are calling out “fuckbois”. A term used to refer to men who flirt with multiple women at the same time, lead them on, date them only for their body and move on once they’re done. I agree, there are tons of men out there who do exactly that. So are tons of women who do exactly that too.

But since most women are calling out fuckbois in their lives, as a woman, I can say I understand where they are coming from. If a man has deliberately led them on, made false promises, explicit or implied, there is no excuse for such terrible behaviour.

However, what if them men keep running away from some woman because she is clingy, hateful, abusive, cruel? Please don’t tell me women can’t do that, women can be as vicious as any other man out there. Maybe after meeting first few times, the men thought they’d be happier without them than keeping a long term association? What if the men never had any intention of getting romantically involved with you, but you misinterpreted the politeness or niceness for love, because desperation?

Desperation makes us do strange things. I’ve been there, done that. I’ve misinterpreted someone’s goodness for their romantic interest in me, only to be left alone, abandoned. And this has happened more than once. So I know exactly how it feels. I’ve known someone who, after watching a movie with me (I hate Love Aaj Kal) stopped talking to me completely. Before that we’d be talking all the time. Someone else asked me out on one Valentine’s Day, and then got married to his childhood sweetheart in April that year. (Surprisingly, both IIMA grads. Assholes.)

But is it their fault? Perhaps the second guy, yes. He was a fuckboi. Asshole. But the first one I mentioned, no. He never made any promises. He never told me he had feelings for me. In fact, he always told me how he likes a batchmate of his, who is in an abusive relationship with another batchmate of his. But then, that’s that. He never took me for a ride. Why should I, then accuse him of breaking my heart? Yes, my heart was broken, I felt terrible, cried myself to sleep. But then, it was not his fault.

Having said that, I also know how hateful some women could be even in day to day conversations. A friend has a terrible habit of being emotionally manipulative. She regularly likes to play mind games where she’d say something which has a reference in conversation she would have had with a common friend, just to see my reactions and gauge if we have ‘talked about her behind her back’. She’s so hateful and exudes so much negativity, even I’d not like to be hanging out around her. I’d rather have my peace of mind than walk around on eggshells all the time.

So, perhaps, not all men are assholes for not reciprocating your imagined love. Perhaps changing a bit of your own behaviour to be generally likeable could help.

I like to believe I am much sorted mentally. There was a rough phase in my life where I felt severely directionless and extremely unhappy. I have dragged myself out of that self loath and it was not easy. However, as an introvert and emotional person who doesn’t like confrontation, I take things to heart.

Recently, though, I stopped being a pushover and that has ruffled up quite a few feathers in the family. I have just started putting myself above what others think about me, and apparently, people can’t digest it well. I’m sorry, but my mental health is more important than what you feel because I did not want to tell you the price of kurta I am wearing. (people are shallow.)

Anyway, by doing that, I have also started letting go of things easily. The lesser I cared about how they made me feel, the more I felt empowered and felt like a bigger person who has reached the zen state where others were so insignificant that their behaviour stopped bothering me.

This is on Twitter too. Earlier, the abuses would get to me. I tried really hard not to offend people. Saying the “politically correct” thing always so that not to come across as a Modi supporter. But then, I realised, why not? Why try so hard to be politically correct, when it is so easy to actually be yourself.

Those who matter will respect your differing view point. And then those who take an offence, should probably read my draft folder to see what I’ve written/tweeted is just tip of the iceberg.